…I was spending most of today and yesterday setting up for a funeral for them tomorrow, as well as setting everything up that Morgan desired in her letter. I figured it was the least I could do for the three of them; they saved my life after all.

So...uh, hey, one last follow up on the Cabal thing...

The bodies are missing!

I was getting ready today for the quick funeral I had planned for them, and uh, yeah! They have no idea what happened to them! Somehow the bodies disappeared this morning! This can means one of three things as far as I see it. Either someone stole their bodies, they have risen from the dead (oh dear god), or they're still alive somehow; all of which sound incredibly unlikely! I'm not really sure what to think at this point, I can't exactly complete Morgan's request anymore though

I got to be honest...I'm not really sure what to think about it. At this point, I'll accept anything really. For now, I think I'm just gonna let the matter rest. Maybe in the future I'll try and investigate this and see what I can find out about what happened to them. If they are alive out there somewhere...I'm sure we'll meet again. Maybe I can properly thank them when that time comes. This is all rather confusing @.@

If you ever need to ask the questions "Am I needed? Should I help them?" The answer is always yes. Always.

…I was spending most of today and yesterday setting up for a funeral for them tomorrow, as well as setting everything up that Morgan desired in her letter. I figured it was the least I could do for the three of them; they saved my life after all.

So...uh, hey, one last follow up on the Cabal thing...

The bodies are missing!

I was getting ready today for the quick funeral I had planned for them, and uh, yeah! They have no idea what happened to them! Somehow the bodies disappeared this morning! This can mean one of three things as far as I see it. Either someone stole their bodies, they have risen from the dead (oh dear god), or they're still alive somehow; all of which side incredibly unlikely! I'm not really sure what to think at this point, I can't exactly complete Morgan's request anymore though

I got to be honest...I'm not really sure what to think about it. At this point, I'll accept anything really. For now, I think I'm just gonna let the matter rest. Maybe in the future I'll try and investigate this and see what I can find out about what happened to them. If they are alive out there somewhere...I'm sure we'll meet again. Maybe I can properly thank them when that time comes.

I...

Okay no idea what to feel about this so I'm just going to pull the #AdellIsRight card and let the matter rest until we have more info. I... guess it would be nice, though if they DIDN'T die saving the world and one of our own...

I think the only word I can come up with right now apart from that is 'BLIMEY'.

They sometimes say, "the place where I am right now was circled on a map for me"... Unfortunately, I kind of suck at orienteering.

Pixelmage wrote:I personally thing the last two words, if supposed to be readable, are actually "Good luck." due to capitalization. But that's speculation at it's finest.

It would make sense, yes, but that means we're dealing with a more sohpisticated cypher than the other ones because those 2 last words are: "Kjsu jvqn." That would mean that the letter 'j' mapped to 'o' and to 'l' and that the letter 's' also mapped to 'o'.

About the Cabal's bodies disappearing, I only have to say one thing: "What. The. Hell.".

Why should we do the right thing?-Well... because it's the right thing to do, there's no other good reason.

Am I a bad guy trying to be good, or a good guy trying to convince himself that he's not the bad guy?

Blurred_9L wrote:It would make sense, yes, but that means we're dealing with a more sohpisticated cypher than the other ones because those 2 last words are: "Kjsu jvqn." That would mean that the letter 'j' mapped to 'o' and to 'l' and that the letter 's' also mapped to 'o'.

Vigenere for instance, maps characters independently, so two different characters do map back to the same one depending on the key.In that one, for instance, if you decode a message with itself, the result will be a string of all "a"s. So that point does not necessarily disproves my idea.

Anyway, as for the Cabal vanishing? Erik, if you're alive, get back here and give us the plain information, now. After that, good luck with your life.

Blurred_9L wrote:That would mean that the letter 'j' mapped to 'o' and to 'l' and that the letter 's' also mapped to 'o'.

For 'j' I would assume they are coded using different cyphers since the two 'j's are in different fonts. No idea about the two letters mapping to 'o' though...that is, if Pixelmage's hypothesis is actually correct...

As for the bodies vanishing...did Radio Void Rebel take them by any chance?

SuperKing93 wrote:For 'j' I would assume they are coded using different cyphers since the two 'j's are in different fonts. No idea about the two letters mapping to 'o' though...that is, if Pixelmage's hypothesis is actually correct...

As for the bodies vanishing...did Radio Void Rebel take them by any chance?

yeah, I guess I hadn't noticed that thing Pix said.

Also, why would the rebels take the bodies. They're in the void.

Why should we do the right thing?-Well... because it's the right thing to do, there's no other good reason.

Am I a bad guy trying to be good, or a good guy trying to convince himself that he's not the bad guy?

No, it's got to be a self-contained puzzle. Whatever we need to solve it should all be somewhere hidden in Erik's original message. The trouble is finding it, identifying it, figuring out how to use it, and implementing it properly. >_<

Why are we even arguing about a dead fictional dude and hypothetical ninjas?

Qara-Xuan Zenith wrote:No, it's got to be a self-contained puzzle. Whatever we need to solve it should all be somewhere hidden in Erik's original message. The trouble is finding it, identifying it, figuring out how to use it, and implementing it properly. >_<

Why does it have to be self contained?

"Well an idiot pokes the thing with his fingers. A scientist gets someone else's fingers."

…I was spending most of today and yesterday setting up for a funeral for them tomorrow, as well as setting everything up that Morgan desired in her letter. I figured it was the least I could do for the three of them; they saved my life after all.

So...uh, hey, one last follow up on the Cabal thing...

The bodies are missing!

I was getting ready today for the quick funeral I had planned for them, and uh, yeah! They have no idea what happened to them! Somehow the bodies disappeared this morning! This can mean one of three things as far as I see it. Either someone stole their bodies, they have risen from the dead (oh dear god), or they're still alive somehow; all of which side incredibly unlikely! I'm not really sure what to think at this point, I can't exactly complete Morgan's request anymore though

I got to be honest...I'm not really sure what to think about it. At this point, I'll accept anything really. For now, I think I'm just gonna let the matter rest. Maybe in the future I'll try and investigate this and see what I can find out about what happened to them. If they are alive out there somewhere...I'm sure we'll meet again. Maybe I can properly thank them when that time comes. This is all rather confusing @.@

I believe the Cabal has reintegrated somewhere beyond the wall again. Or something. We still don't know what would happen when a fictional dies.

So, yeah. I'm finally hopping onboard.

A quick glance on the pdf shows that "Nf. Dbfzlqfzkoizv" is obviously "Mr. Administrator". If the rest is encoded with a repeated keyword, we can and should try to see if decoding the other parts with the same key gets us anything.

UPD: Oh, I seem to be getting somewhere. Substracting (numerically, 26-wrapped) the latter from the former gives "ANCXSQXHMFSNOKD", which seems to be nonsense, until I tried to encode the phrase and didn't get the intended result. And then I realized that in Viginere cipher, A=0, so the code must be shifted by 1 to the right.

"BODYTRYINGTOPLE".Gentlemen, it's a Viginere cipher.

UPD2: I tried to decode the text while padding the key with 'A' on either side, and all I got was gibberish. However, after deleting the "This is failure" part "Mr. Administrator" was decoded properly. I think I got lucky, and the start points just matched. However, the rest was gibberish, so I do believe that there are independent keys for each paragraph. Or (gasp!) the text is encrypted with another text. So I'll keep digging.Also, the standalone capital letters are obviously 'I'. That's one more hint to restore the keyphrase.

UPD3: Guessed the phrase to "BODYTRYINGTOPLEASEAAAAA". The 'A's at the end are padding, obviously - that means there is a 5-letter word left. Gives sensible results (don't see the point in posting them yet). Guessing further.

I have attempted to suppress my inner hyperspace future gardener crying out against all the injustice I am committing.

This is worthy of a separate post.Paragraph 6, decoded with the keyword "BODYTRYINGTOPLEASEEVERY":

hidden.pdf, paragraph 6 (decoded) wrote:Mr. Administrator has received a strange image in his email. He will probably conclude it is ahoax and not pursue its investigation. Ask him for it. If he provides it, you will be able tofind more. Use an open mind.

WMG: The keyphrase expands to "EVERYBODYTRYINGTOPLEASEEVERYBODY". Or "everyone". With elephants. In case it's a "text encrypted with a text" case, of course. I tried to check the "body" and "one" keyphrase pieces, but it's too short to give any discernible results.

I have attempted to suppress my inner hyperspace future gardener crying out against all the injustice I am committing.

Dryunya wrote:This is worthy of a separate post.Paragraph 6, decoded with the keyword "BODYTRYINGTOPLEASEEVERY":

hidden.pdf, paragraph 6 (decoded) wrote:Mr. Administrator has received a strange image in his email. He will probably conclude it is ahoax and not pursue its investigation. Ask him for it. If he provides it, you will be able tofind more. Use an open mind.

WMG: The keyphrase expands to "EVERYBODYTRYINGTOPLEASEEVERYBODY". Or "everyone". With elephants. In case it's a "text encrypted with a text" case, of course.Hell, I'll try it now.

The plain-text part is underlined. It must be removed for the text to be decrypted properly.

hidden.pdf (decrypted) wrote:This is failure: every attempt the Cabal has made to reach out to new recruits. We have been stymied by our own lack of goals and diplomacy. Others see those who lead us as monsters, and I increasingly agree. Though I committed heinous acts in my past, it was only because of the context in which I existed, a story which made me a creature of evil. This world has changed me.Maybe I can change if I stay in this place, or maybe I can continue to change in my original world, with an author who does not use me simply as an opposing force, but acknowledges my humanity and my desires.It is my hope that my old friends will not get this far. I cannot risk being identified. They already think I have betrayed them. I do not think that I have.I seeded this information in multiple places hoping that they, being three people, cannot monitor all these sources, but you, being a multitude, can. It is already true that they do not have the time to read through all of your forum posts. You have strength in numbers. But still, I cannot risk that this message will reach them, so I have embedded further layers of crypotext.Mr. Administrator has received a strange image in his email. He will probably conclude it is a hoax and not pursue its investigation. Ask him for it. If he provides it, you will be able to find more. Use an open mind.I do not believe that my position and yours are identical, but neither are they binary opposites.Good luck.

I have attempted to suppress my inner hyperspace future gardener crying out against all the injustice I am committing.

It's far from over, anyway. There's this image he's talking about (already bugging Mr. A), and I'm not sure we're done with the grille - it says "shift it to the right", and I don't think we did that. That's as far as I can push it right now, as I'm going home soon. More to come later.

Also, c'mon Erik - that was a textbook example of known plaintext attack, you shouldn't do stuff like that in secure communication. Unless we were intended to find the key by ourselves, I Sequence-Broke here.

I have attempted to suppress my inner hyperspace future gardener crying out against all the injustice I am committing.